‘There’s a Hurricane Coming': Latino-Led Nonprofits Brace for Hardship Under Trump

Every Monday morning for the past five months, staff at the Chicago-based nonprofit Alianza America have held a virtual meeting with roughly 20 to 30 of their partners in the United States and abroad to discuss how they will continue their work to support migrant communities amid the Trump administration’s crackdown.

Alianza Americas is a nonprofit network of groups that promote equity, democracy building, and climate justice, among other issues. It has campaigned against all deportations since its inception in 2004. The group has intensified efforts to oppose mass arrests and deportations without due process, which are increasing under the Trump administration. Shortly after Trump’s re-election in November, some of its 58 members began pushing for weekly strategy meetings to discuss the new administration’s opposition to immigration and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, among other areas, Dulce Guzmán, Alianza Americas executive director, said. Those discussions have included determining how best to engage with local elected officials and other prominent community members such as faith leaders as they mount community resistance efforts. The groups also talk about how they might provide mental health services to support families fearful of being targeted by federal law enforcement, regardless of their citizenship status, she said.

“From the beginning, we knew that the administration’s rhetoric stating that they would only go after ‘criminals’ was a lie, because to them anyone who is here from another country is a criminal,” Guzmán said.

Advocates say people in the country lawfully have been deported, most notably a Maryland man the administration said it mistakenly deported to a Salvadoran prison. Still, Trump remains committed to launching the largest deportation program in the country’s history, to end what he has called the “migrant invasion.” His rhetoric painting many immigrants entering the country from Latin America as dangerous gang members and criminals is placing a target on the backs of Latino-led groups and damaging efforts to serve and protect Hispanic Americans, nonprofits leaders have said. And it comes on top of the administration’s efforts to block federal funding for equity issues such as immigration, climate justice, and ending discrimination, which is making it harder for Latino groups to sustain their programs, they added.

Hispanics are one of the fastest growing populations in the country, numbering more than 65 million people. Of course, not all Hispanic Americans are immigrants — some have roots that go back to when California and Texas were still part of Mexico. Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917. And there have been heavy flows of immigrants from Cuba and other parts of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean as well as Central and South America for much of the past century. Trump wants to halt much of that influx. Almost immediately after his inauguration, Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border, which he said was “overrun by cartels, criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers,” among others, setting the stage for more intense executive actions. He has signaled that the next step could be to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, which would allow him to deploy military forces within the country to act as law enforcement.

Making sense of all the executive actions that have come since January and those that might lie ahead — such as possible cuts to Medicaid — and explaining them to member organizations weekly has been an onerous task for the Alianza Americas staff of 14. Each week since December, they have been tasked with providing information and analysis at the meetings.

“It’s taken us out of our regularly scheduled activities,” Guzmán said.

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   Nonprofits and the Trump Agenda

“And it’s been difficult to try to explain all the different elements that could be impacting them at once. So we’ve been trying to break information down into easily understandable pieces and respond to questions or requests that we get from our member organizations as best as we can.”

Alianza Americas also tries to spend at least some of the meeting discussing the mental health toll anti-immigrant rhetoric is having on nonprofit staff and their communities. Aside from immigration raids, that is the biggest concern Alianza Americas is hearing from members, Guzmán said. It’s affecting advocacy work among Latino-led nonprofits that are worried they could be targeted by the administration if they call too much attention to their work, she said. In response to this unease, Alianza Americas starts the meetings by singing songs that “bring us joy or motivation,” such as “Un Derecho de Nacimiento,” which translates to “a right from birth,” Guzmán said.

“Then there are times we check in, asking our members how they are or what is bringing them hope,” she said, adding that those minor salves can be helpful to combat feelings of fear and helplessness.

Courtesy of Dulce Guzman

Some nonprofit leaders are, themselves, worried about retaliation from the Trump administration and immigration critics because of their citizenship status. Guzmán, for example, is a DACA recipient, part of a program for people brought to the United States as children that protects them at least temporarily from deportation and gives them authorization to work. DACA is under legal scrutiny and facing ongoing challenges. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against the program but kept in place a stay that allows renewals to continue. However, the program remains closed to new applicants. There are approximately 538,000 active DACA recipients in the country.

The role as head of Alianza Americas is “very personal work for me,” Guzmán said.

“And our members, some of them have their own complicated status. They’re carrying a heavy load, and it’s a concern for us. We’re barely at 100 days of this administration.”

Future Funding Needed but Uncertain

The instability of federal funding under Trump is adding to the stress for Latino-led nonprofits. Like the rest of the sector, they have been rocked by a federal-funding freeze that went into effect in January and has continued to disrupt the delivery of federal dollars to nonprofits despite being rescinded.

There is tremendous pressure on Latino-led nonprofits to provide services to their communities amid a flurry of Trump administration policies that affect immigration, higher education, and potential cuts to federal health care programs, said Julián Castro, CEO of the California-based Latino Community Foundation and former housing secretary under President Barack Obama.

“At the same time, there’s a lot of uncertainty and the fear of being targeted by an administration that seems determined to stamp out the ability of certain communities to get served well, either by the government or by others,” he said.

The administration has moved more quickly and aggressively than many assumed it would, Castro said. Swift policy changes have caught nonprofits and their funders off-guard, he said. Some major funders have been reluctant to say how or if they plan to continue their support for marginalized communities in the face of opposition from the administration.

However, the Latino Community Foundation, which serves as an intermediary between funders and grantees, has remained steadfast in its efforts to support Latino nonprofits, Castro said. In March, the group announced it had awarded nearly $4 million in grants to Latino-led organizations in California and Nevada for the first quarter of the year. Last year, it also provided capacity-building grants to six grassroots organizations in California in anticipation of a “political landscape hostile to vulnerable, immigrant communities.” The Latino Community Foundation hopes the awards will signal to larger foundations the need to invest in these groups immediately, Castro said.

Somos El Poder

A few grant makers, like the MacArthur and Robert Wood Johnson foundations, have pledged to increase their commitments to support grantees, including marginalized people. But that won’t be enough to strengthen Latino-led nonprofits that will need to weather four years of potential federal defunding, said Armando Zumaya, founder of the fundraising group Somos El Poder. Zumaya, who said he has been warning Latino groups since the first Trump administration that they might lose federal funding. With that belief coming to fruition, it is now time for other funders to help groups strengthen their fundraising so they can stop relying so heavily on federal funds and start raising more from other sources, including small donors in their own communities, he said.

If philanthropists want to support Latino nonprofits, they need to provide more than program grants, Zumaya said. They need to give groups money for fundraising training and development, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars and has been largely inaccessible to smaller organizations, he said.

“Make it so your grantees don’t need you anymore,” he said.

“There is a hurricane coming,” he added. “And when there’s a hurricane coming, you don’t go buy new furniture. That’s what funders are doing because that’s what they know how to do, instead of buying the planking for the windows or sandbags or strengthening the roof.”

Alianza Americas members also have been pushing the group to provide fundraising training, Guzmán said. Part of the work of Alianza Americas includes partnering with groups in Latin America and the Caribbean to provide information on the deportation process and ways to locate family members when they are detained and deported. Many of those foreign partners have been impacted by the near elimination of U.S. foreign aid and face an uncertain future, Guzmán said. Alianza Americas is planning to provide a fundraising training session this month in an effort to help members diversify their revenue now that they have lost U.S. grants. However, its capacity to provide that training is limited, Guzmán said.

“There are some organizations that were already on a shoestring budget trying to figure out how to build their fundraising capacity,” she said.

“In this moment, they’re in need of more resources.”